The First Rule of Improvisation

Employee Spotlight Profile

Maddalena Sansoni, Events Manager Mexico, Gardner Business Media
 

 “. . . And remember that for the next couple of days, the answer to every question must always be YES.”

This is how my director, Claude Mas, closes his pre-show meetings. All of them. Always. This is the essential key message that all GBM (Gardner Business Media) Mexico staff keep in mind before the start of each event. Whether it's a congress with 200 participants or an expo with 12,000 attendees, the number one rule is that the answer must always be "YES."

It is Curious That “Always Saying Yes” is Also the Main Rule of Improvisation

Theater is a wonderful world, as well as one of my passions from the years before Gardner. It is an immersive experience that combines your total presence with multiple realities.

A theater play and an industrial manufacturing expo seem to be two very distant spheres, but instead they are more similar than one might imagine.

The rustling of the curtain before the start of the show, the dusty lights on the stage, the enchanted apparition of the actors, the applause’s roar from the audience are just the tip of a much larger and invisible iceberg.

Behind a show, there are many characters who never appear and without whom the magic of the theater could not come to life. Audiovisual technicians, costume designers, make-up artists, writers, musicians, accountants, marketing employees, door attendants and many more.

And there is also an unknown amount of time dedicated to writing, selecting actors, memorizing lines, cleaning wooden floors, sewing clothes, rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing, negotiating, promoting, replacing some injured actor who leaves the company at the very last moment . . .

The audience only knows a bunch of charming actors and the effortless showtime. The public is unaware that behind those 90 entertaining minutes of enchantment there are dozens of people working for months.

An improvisation setting up, Siena (ITALY), 2014

Meximold, the expo that I have been organizing since 2019, lasts exactly 32 hours and can be visited in less than 5 hours. And behind those mere 32 hours there are about 24 GBM staff members, 100 marketing employees from as many exhibiting companies and 27 suppliers, at work for about 10 months.

If a 90-minute play contains dozens of invisible characters and many unknown activities necessary to bring a show to life, the timeline of a two-day industrial event can be surprisingly articulate as it contains an amazing quantity of tasks: from the choice of the finger food served at the cocktail party to the documents to get the Civil Protection permits; from the design of each graphic (more than 100 pieces of artwork among signage, ADs and banners) to the negotiations with the translators, the riggers, the shippers, the decorators and so on; from the deadline to receive the conference abstracts, to the creation of the calendar for the setup operations; from the floor plan weekly changes, to the civil insurance clauses and, above all, constant customer care where the customers are both the exhibitors and the attendees.

Every time the dismantling of an expo begins, I find myself thinking wistfully about how ephemeral the result of my work is. It is a showcase that takes place in the blink of an eye, a suspended time, a non-place.

But how much adrenaline and how much emotion in this non-place! How proud I feel to see it rising and shining! What a powerful feeling to witness the industrious anthill of men and women who, in less than 48 hours, build one hundred magnificent booths, and calibrate, level up and rev up machines the size of a flat, reproducing miniature factories.

Where a few hours before there was only a large empty space made of concrete floors and echo, now you can see many tiny, fancy offices where six-figure agreements will be signed, small bars where quotations will be discussed over a glass of wine, mini-factories and bright showrooms.

A small number of the GBM staff preparing for Meximold, Querétaro (MEX), 2021

In my job, there is a moment that is my favorite: the partial opening of the exhibit floor at 7:00 a.m., on the first day of the expo, three hours before the inauguration. That day, at 7:00 a.m., exhibitors can enter to manage the final details before the start of the event. And, believe me, walking the floor in those three suspended hours is like entering a theater in the afternoon before the premiere.

The lights are still low. Some cleaners who have just finished the nightshift drag themselves wearily in the spotless aisles. Some young decorator is sitting inside the booth where he worked all night, now he has a Coke in his hand and the exhausted look of one who only seeks some rest. Two electricians check a faulty outlet.

The floor is already clean, nothing reveals the hustle and bustle of a few hours before, with the fear of not being able to finish in time, with the pressure of unforeseen problems to solve and with time that seems to be running faster than normal.

Nothing reveals the hysteria around a CNC machine that won't work. Or the yelling around an LED screen that has been installed crookedly: "My boss arrives tomorrow morning from Taiwan, this screen MUST stay straight and I'm not leaving until it stays straight!"; or in front of a graphic that has a different Pantone from the original one: "My logo is wine red, not lobster red, we need to fix it NOW!"

At 7:00 a.m. of the opening day, the battles of the night before are just memories and only the miracle of a miniature city remains. The brochures are lined up, the tools are aligned in the showcases, the badges are distributed to the colleagues before the sales director gives a motivational speech to the team, it’s time to tie ties and to put a couple of preventive Band-Aids on the feet.

The show will begin shortly.

It's 11:00 a.m., the doors of the expo are opened with the solemnity of a curtain, the scanners at the entrance begin to beep on the badges of the visitors in line. The show has begun and now the main rule of this dance is only one: "The answer must always be yes."

The doors opening, Querétaro, (MEX) October 2022

In the great world of theatre, what captured my heart a few years ago was the hilarious art of improvisation. There are no scripts, no written stories, no plots. There is only the desire to play and to create the best possible story together with another person. With speed, imagination, respect, and generosity. This is why it is so important to always say yes to the other person’s question, to accept the other's proposals and to find solutions. You must never, never oppose the other’s query, but seek compromise instead and look for viable paths. Because there are always options.

During the two days of an expo, we are all actors in a great collective improvisation, where solutions and options must be found all the time, with respect and generosity. For 48 hours, a "no" is never an acceptable answer and every person with whom you have a conversation must be welcomed, whether it is an old visitor, a German engineer, a Japanese CEO, a student, a cleaner, a catering waiter who needs to pass some wine bottles though security, an assistant who does not speak Spanish, a GBM colleague with a stomach ache, an exhibitor looking for a Chinese translator available in less than 45 minutes, a Civil Protection inspector or anyone else. The key word is "welcome everyone and always say yes."

It is curious that it is also the main rule of improvisation.

Need more information?
Maddalena Sansoni
Events Manager Mexico
Gardner Business Media, Inc.
LinkedIn
WhatsApp: (+34) 661-090-459
 

About the Author

Maddalena Sansoni

Maddalena is an Event Manager at Gardner Business Media and currently organizes Meximold and Plastics Recycling LATAM, two events located in Mexico. She joined Gardner in 2019 after working as an Event Manager for different organizations, coordinating shows dedicated to several industries: machine tools, industrial manufacturing, tourism and handicrafts. Maddalena holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations. Italian by birth, she has lived in Mexico for the last seven years and is now based in Valencia, Spain, where she lives with her husband, her daughter, and her dog.